Tower of Terror
by David N. Brown
Summary: More odds and ends from the "Vegas Saga"...  The crew are sent to rid Donald Trump's tower of zombies.  But what else lurks within?  David N. Brown resides in Mesa, Arizona.
1. Last testament

**In my usual bass-ackwards fashion, here's something I came up with as an opener for "Fear and Loafing", to introduce Alice, Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee. Let me know how it works for opening the story.**

I don't have much time. Not much air, either.

This is the sole survivor of Third Shift Karen Avenue Patrol out of Sahara Casino. Never mind the name. We were sent to search for medical supplies in Sunrise Hospital. We failed. Now I'm hiding in the trunk of a Plymouth. The infected are all over the car. If you're hearing this, you're hearing them. I've never seen so many come together so fast. Too many. Too fast.

It's going to look like it was just bad luck. Even we thought that's all it was, until the end. We didn't want it to be more. When our scouts never radioed in. When the truck wouldn't start. When our rear guard were overrun without firing a shot. Even when we heard that sound. It wasn't a scream. It sure wasn't one of ours.

One name I'll give: Deputy Colt. If any of us ever had a chance, it was thanks to him. His real name- it's Sheldon Smith. He said he had a wife named Katy, two kids, Kevin and Sarah, in Gallup. If anyone hears of them- tell them he loved them, always. Tell them he died a hero. And tell them I'm sorry we couldn't make it mean something. Me, I'm the one who put things together. Then I ran. I heard them die. I don't think they blamed me. So please, nobody hate me.

The pain in my leg stopped a while ago. Now I feel pins and needles in my hip. Never got a good look at what hit me. I think it broke. Even if they find me, it may look like nothing but splinters. I don't suppose they'll look too closely. If they don't find this tape... If they don't see the dart... Good god, if they don't find out about _her_...

There it is again. Maybe you hear it, maybe the infected will drown it out. But I hear it like it was the only sound in the world. Hard to believe anything that was ever human could make a sound like that. It's not the zeds, it's her, and them. I don't know if they can really talk. But they _laugh_. They laugh like banshees with the giggles. They laugh while we die.

Somebody needs to know. But... but that's not what matters. Forget my name, if you find it. But if you ever run into a lady named Elizabeth Dixon, blonde, thirtyish, out of Phoenix... Tell her Harry says he's sorry, and he tried to come home.

...As the voice subsided into muffled sob, a lesioned hand pushed the stop button.


	2. Adventuredome

**Sorry to fans for waiting so long for new installments, and still not going further with the latest story line... This is around the middle of the first part of "Fear and Loafing", which I am currently revising for ebook publication. The following chapters will be fleshing things out, more or less the same way "Columbus vs. Little Rock".**

_in the girl there's a room_  
_in the room there's a table_  
_on the table there's a candle _  
_and it won't burn out_

_in the woman there's a song_  
_in the song there is hope_  
_in the hope revolution_

**Adventuredome**

"So," Columbus said, "what ride do you want to go on first? The carousel?"

"As if!" Little Rock laughed. "I'm thinking the Blaster... No, first, the Slingshot, then... no, wait, first the bumper cars!"

Columbus gulped. Wichita interjected: "Why don't you guys go on the Slingshot, while I talk to Columbus."

"I'm proud of you for what you did this afternoon," Wichita said. She and her husband watched the Chaos tiltawhirl from the park's upper deck. He had never mustered the courage or intestinal fortitude to ride it, but he seemed to love to see it run.

"You did most of the work," he said. She punched him on the arm.

"I meant the board meeting," she said, then stroked his shoulder. "Though, high marks all around!"

"I couldn't have done it without you," he said. She almost made another moderately naughty rejoinder, then fell silent as she met his gaze.

"Before I met you, I was just like the board," he said. "I didn't believe I was good enough to do much of anything, and I was sure nothing good would happen to me. Even when it did." He kissed her.

"You know I love you, right?" She nodded. "You want to know a reason why?It's never been just because you were kind to me. I know that wasn't the right thing to say. It's not like you were the first girl who was nice to me. I've had that happen before, though nowhere near often enough for me to get used to. I fell in love with you because I could tell that in your heart, you always wanted to be kind, and you didn't have to need help with your homework, or want a non-threatening male friend, or even want me for your boyfriend to be kind to me. That's when I decided you were someone I could fall in love with."

After a while, he said, "So, what did you want to tell me?"

She leaned out over the railing, looking nervous. She lifted a necklace from beneath her neckline to fidget with a flawless ruby, carved in the shape of a heart with a gold "crack" running through it. "I wanted to tell you..." She ran her fingers through her hair. Then, in inspiration, she lifted a strand of her hair, letting her husband have a look at the root. "I'm a redhead." Her laugh echoed as he hustled her out of sight.

Little Rock grinned at Tal as they departed from three round trips on the bumper cars. "Holy cow, girl, you have no mercy!" Tal said.

"Hey, they knew risks," she said nonchalantly. She looked disdainful when someone called out. It was a latino boy, not quite a year older than she was, who went by the name of Nogales. She answered semi-articulately and shuffled away a little faster.

"What's up with him?" Tal said.

"He's the one that kept bumping me."

"Did you bump him back?"

"I knocked him to the rail, twice," she said with a smirk. Tal smiled knowingly, then turned around. He called out to the boy, discretely sidestepping a kick at his shins.

"So... you were pretty good on the track," Nogales said nervously as they waited in line for the Slingshot parachute ride. It was hard to tell if he was more nervous about talking to a cute, self-reliant girl or being under the kindly but watchful eyes of a fortysomethingish man.

"Thank you," she said. "You didn't completely s-tink." She finished draining a soda. "So, how long have you been here?"

"Since week 9," he said. "My uncle drove me, my sister and his family up from Phoenix. He said my parents would come after. They still haven't come."

"They could still be out there," she said tactfully.

"That's what everybody says," Nogales said. "Somehow, it doesn't help."

"So," Tal said, "where do you know each other from?"

"We're in school together," Nogales said. "Math, English and geology." Abbie's expression showed it was news to her.

"I guess we met in the gym for junior deputies," said Little Rock.

"So, you go out on the patrols?" Tal asked.

"Yeah," Nogales said. "I'm on the Joe Brown beat."

"Bummer," said Little Rock. Joe Brown Drive was one of the more thankless patrols, patrolling from Karen Road to Desert Inn, along the edge of a country club and the approximate edge of a poorly-mapped area called the "Dark Sector". Zombie infestations were just enough to make it dangerous, without making it a strategic priority.

When they reached the front of the line, Nogales followed right behind Little Rock. Then his face fell as Tal cut between them.

The group met up again at the midway games area. "Where have you been?" Little Rock said with a scowl. Her sister was blushing, and her brother-in-law had a sheepish smile.

"We rode Chaos," he said.

"Twice!" Wichita added with a smirk.

"Hey! Texas!" someone shouted. Wichita frowned but offered no protest as Melissa Strangelove scurried over to join them.

An hour later, Little Rock smiled as Nogales gave her a large teddy bear, hard-won from the shooting gallery. Then she grinned wider, and Nogales' face fell again, as Tal proudly walked up with a stuffed elephant almost as big as she was.

They ate a late desert at a large candy store. The girl chattered alternately with Nogales and Tal, who eyed each other from behind veneers of courtesy. Melissa pitched her ideas to Columbus, who smiled, nodded and made occasional suggestions, while Wichita snuggled against him, confident but protective.

"Listen," Nogales said, "I was wondering... Would you like to come with me and see something?" Little Rock looked moderately interested.

"Sure!" Tal said. "Let's all go!"


	3. The Tower

"My uncle's in maintenance," Nogales said with a little pride. "He lets me use his key to come up here." He opened a key and stepped onto the roof of Circus Circus's west tower. While the others followed, he set up a telescope.

"Oh!" said Little Rock. "Do you look at the stars?"

"No, too bright," he said. "I watch the city." He pointed at a column of light to the south. "That's my reference point- Luxor. It's practically next door to the airport. When the _Enfermedad_ hit, that whole end of the Strip was wiped out. Not just fires, but gas explosions, plane crashes, even bombs... but somehow, at the end of it, Luxor was still standing, and the light's still running."

He shifted the telescope to a closer point, a building at least 60 stories high a few blocks off the Boulevard. "That is Trump Tower. It's the second tallest building in Vegas that's still standing and complete. The only one taller is Stratosphere, and that's strictly an observation tower."

Little Rock peered through the telescope. "So, what's special about it?"

"Because," he said, adjusting the telescope, "there's lights on."

"Huh," she said, then shrugged. "But what does that mean? Lights go on and off all the time."

"But that's a light in a suite. And it's on every night."

Columbus motioned Little Rock aside. Looking closely, he said, "Curtains are drawn... and there's no movement... and no lights in the other rooms. It's almost certainly just a light on a timer."

"Maybe so," Nogales said. "But some people are sure they have seen shadows on the curtain. Even if there's nobody living in there, somebody had to set the light to go on, for a reason. Maybe it's to lead people to the room. And what's inside?" Columbus nodded thoughtfully, then looked to Tal.

"Has anyone tried to search the hotel?"

Tal laughed. "Hunting parties go through there all the time, but no one's gone above the third floor. That building is next door to the biggest mall in Vegas. One light fifty floors up is the least of their concerns."

"Yeah, still, it could be a survivor."

"That's what most of us think," Nogales interjected excitedly. "A lot of people say it could be Donald Trump. There have been sightings, in the day... He could be going out by day disguised as a zombie, then hiding in the tower at night... But who knows if he stayed sane? He might be like that guy, you know, Leo DiCaprio played... Hughes! Or in that story about the vampires, that they made that lousy Will Smith movie about, hiding by night, and hunting by day... Only, maybe he doesn't just hunt zombies..." Little Rock's eyes widened. Wichita smiled.

"So... Is there anything else?" the girl said.

"Oh, yeah," said Nogales, now in high storytelling gear. "Have you ever heard of... Mothman?"

Little Rock's expression went from curious to quizzical. Wichita sputtered and then burst into open laughter. "Mothman? What's that? And what would he do, fly into the Luxor lamp?"

"Hey," said Columbus, "I think Mothman's scary!" His wife leaned against the wall and continued to laugh. The others soon joined in the mirth. Nogales looked upset, but Columbus turned his head. In the murk of too-bright, too-few lights to the east, he heard a low hum, and for a moment he thought he glimpsed a shape flit among the buildings.


	4. Andy Capp

**Here's an alternate draft of a chapter from "Fear and Loafing", moved to earlier in the story arc.**

_in the boy there's a voice  
in the voice there's a calling  
in the call there's a promise  
and it won't quiet down_

_in the man there's vision  
in the vision is a road  
it's the road to his freedom..._

"Okay, folks, this is going to be tougher than the usual `sweep', but I think you can handle it," Chief Sahara said. He pointed to an overgrown drainage ditch at the base of a cinder block wall, and a large hole in said wall big enough to step through. "Our objective is a townhome behind that wall. "

It was a jog to the ditch, then clambering down and back up again. The most discomforting part was going past several bloated corpses at the bottom. "Are you okay?" Krista called back to Austin as they reached the top.

"Yeah," he said, "but I stepped in something." When he reached the top, they embraced at the base of the wall, while a veteran named Detroit set up a ladder. Strangelove turned her camera on the pair. She noted that Austin wore an eyepatch for some reason.

"Ew, you smell," Krista said, withdrawing from a kiss. "Well... I'll give you a feel for luck." He reached under her jacket, and a moment later she screeched and slapped his hand. Strangelove turned the camera away a little too fast as Krista walked off red-faced.

Strangelove was first up the ladder. Stopping short of the top, she held up the camera for a view over the wall. On the far side was another ditch, and the short end of a rectangular town home. A fence ran from the back of the building to the wall. Sahara came over to view the playback. "Damn," he said. "I was figuring on going in the back, and flushing them out the front. But there's no good place to put the ladder that gets us down on the far side of that fence."

"Why use the ladder?" Columbus said. "We can crawl up the spillway."

"One of us could. Maybe two or three," Detroit said. "But in the time it would take to get enough of us in to do the job right, the zombies would catch our scent and run."

"We don't need that many," Austin said. "I can do it myself." Detroit looked at him in incredulity. "I'm not saying I can take on the pack myself. Just let me get in the back door of the unit at the other end. I can give the signal, then wait for the rest of you to arrive. It will be reconnaissance, no more, no less."

"Recon doesn't work on zees," Detroit said, almost hissing. "Not in the dark. They always see you before you see them. Besides, how would you shoot and hold a light? Either you go in defenseless, or you go in blind."

"I don't need a light," Austin said. Then, without saying anything more, he sprinted for the spillway. Detroit started to pursue, but Sahara grabbed his arm.

"I heard," Sahara said to Krista, "that your room is at the base of the far corner of the main tower, the spot furthest from the parking lots. I understand your husband traded several large favors for it."

She nodded. "The lights were keeping him awake. They still do, sometimes. When it's too much, he sleeps with a blind fold."

Sahara looked speculatively at Detroit. He shook his head. "No. Nobody can beat zombies in the dark."

"No," Krista said. "He has."

As she spoke, a radio hissed to life: "I'm in."

Austin stood in a laundry room, just inside the back door. He switched the eye patch, exposing an eye already adjusted to the dim light. He also drew a "hush puppy" .38 revolver. He moved forward slowly, half-crouching like a crab. Ahead of him stretched the narrow kitchen. The first zombie he saw was sleeping on the other side of the counter. It grunted and stirred, just as Austin pulled a plastic bag over its head. Then a single, moderate blow to the head from the gun butt darkened its private world.

Austin peered around a corner, looking from the dining room into the living room. Two zombies slept under the coffee table. A third hunched beside the couch. "No structural damage in evidence." he said, ducking back. "There's three in the living room: two under the table, one in the corner." Beside him, there was a rustled as the stunned zombie inhaled the bag. "I took care of a fourth."

"Get back to the door," Sahara said. "We're coming in the front."

Austin scuttled to the laundry room. As he reached it, he froze. In the kitchen stood a pale figure. Its eyes ought to have glared red in the few rays of sun, but it had some kind of loose, lumpy hat pulled over its eyes. He took aim, and hesitated- because the figure hesitated, too. He blinked in surprise. Zombies were never reluctant to attack. So, maybe it was not a zombie. In the darkness, a window broke, and a moment later sunlight poured in with the breaching of the front door. The figure seemed to vanish like a shadow.

Shots rang through the house. He darted forward, ready for an attack from either side, but all he got was a glimpse of a pallid figure in a checkered flat cap lunging for a rear window. A muzzle flash flared from another room. He ran after, and saw bushes rustling just outside the broken window. Quickly and calmly, he raised the revolver and leaned forward, taking aim at a scuttling shape. Then buckshot hit him in the back.

He murmured "Krista" as he awoke, only to see the thin face and brown eyes of Melissa Strangelove, who was crouching beside him. Like all members of the party, she wore a garbage bag slicker. (Columbus had talked them out of using commercial rain coats by demonstrating how much water could flow through nylon fabric.) She smiled. "Good thing we started wearing kevlar," she said. Taking his hand, she helped him to his feet. "Better go to Wichita." His wife could be heard shouting and hitting a deputy over the head with the butt of a Skorpion.

"Wichita!" he shouted, "I'm okay!" His wife was down a passage, in the bedroom. He had barely started toward her when she reached him, almost knocking him down as she kissed and embraced him.

"Better, uh, take it easy on the makeup," he added.

She pulled back and ran her fingers through his hair. "You are so getting lucky tonight," she said.

"I already am," he said with a smirk. Behind him, a male throat was loudly cleared.

"While we're all relieved Chief Health is all right," said Chief Sahara, "you are still both on duty. And what happened?"

Columbus gently but quickly extricated himself, turned and said, "A zombie followed me to the back door. Then when I drew my gun, he ran for the window." The chief's expression hardened. "I know how it sounds, but that's what happened!"

"Did this zombie," Chief Sahara said coldly, "have a floppy cap on?"

"Yes!" Columbus said. The Chief's frown suddenly became a smile.

"Listen up, boys!" Sahara called out. "Our boy here just scared off Andy Capp!" The deputies all cheered, even the one still reeling from Wichita's pummeling.

"We keep a semiofficial list of `named' zombies," the Chief explained. "They're the ones sighted multiple times without being taken. There's a second list of `Ten Most Wanted', the ones that keep getting away: Jack Ketch... The White Whale... Big Bertha... Mr. McGoo... Chuckie Cheesehead... Floozie Q... Little Anthony... Elvira... The King... And none of them has been on it longer, sighted more often than Andy Capp. His trademark is that he leaves just ahead of hunting parties. Three different guys in my patrol alone have seen him jogging away with that damn cap on, but couldn't take a shot without blowing the operation. But you got between him and the _back_ door!" There was another cheer.

"Listen," Columbus said when he and his wife returned to their room, "I asked room service to bring up something for us to celebrate..." He reached into the nightstand and lifted a wine bottle. "Vintage 1997." Wichita screeched and stormed out the door.


	5. Public service

**Here's a "quickie", inspired by Jesse Eisenberg and Emma Stone cohosting a TV program...**

A man with curly hair and a redheaded woman sat in the patio of a townhouse. The man looked awkward but happy. The woman looked proud of him, and herself, and very much like she enjoyed flaunting it to whomever was on the other end of the camera.

"First question for today," Wichita said, "`If I go into a house, where's the first place I should check for zombies?'"

A shadowy, pale shape stalked through the hotel's staff rooms. Under a table, a zombie curled in a fetal position stirred. A bathroom door opened, letting in just enough light to show a dark shape huddled in a shower.

A few minutes later, the shape reached the laundry room. "The building's okay. We have a pack: two in the break room, one in the bathroom," Little Rock whispered. "If you move in the front, I'll cover the back." As he cut the transmission short, something hit her in the back. She bit back a cry. There was no question what was happening: A zombie was trying to climb out of the dryer. She shoved the door shut and started to reach for a concealed, silenced .32. Whatever was on the other side was smaller and weaker than herself, but relentless even for its kind. She let go of the gun butt to push with both hands. Then she made out the dryer controls, turned a knob and after a few experimental pushes started the washer. A thumping and a muffled scream came from within. She backed away from the machine, and relaxed when the door remained shut. Already, the others were running toward her

"Did I do good?" she asked as Tallahassee walked her outside, to meet her sister and brother-in-law.

"You did w-" Columbus started to say, then, at the hint of motion of his wife's elbow, said, "Yeah, you did good."

Columbus started at the expectant silence, then, after a moment's musing, answered, "Everywhere."


	6. The Mall

No one knew why zombies congregated in malls. They did know that nothing was worse than an infested mall, and that Treasure Island, southernmost of the casino castles, was next door to the largest mall in Vegas.

At almost 2 million square feet, Fashion Show Mall was in fact among the largest in the world. Its entrance was impossible to miss: "The Cloud", a construct like a giant surfboard, towered over the Boulevard. Between the columns that supported the Cloud, a wide footbridge ran to the Wynn casino-hotel/resort. At the corner of the amphitheater shaded by the sculpture, another bridge went from a Neiman Marcus anchor store to Treasure Island. More bridges formed a veritable web: From Wynn to Palazzo, Palazzo to Harrah's, and the Venetian, Venetian to Mirage, and still further south to the heavily infested casinos.

Now, the web was mangled, torn and mutilated, but not beyond functioning. An apparent midair collision had showered flame, shrapnel and debris over Wynn, the Palazzo, and the Venetian along with a generous amount of jet fuel that passers-through insisted they could still smell. The obvious risk of fire deterred hunting parties, but not zombies. Some debris had hit the mall, including a landing gear assembly that cracked the Cloud. Yet, the bridges were still intact, so that a steady stream of zombies moved into and out of the mall, a beachhead on the doorstep of Treasure Island.

As the "Tremors" truck drove up to Treasure Island, shots rang out. From roof tops, lamp posts, boom lifts and cherry pickers, sharpshooters covered the major bridges day and night. At the moment, a score of zombies were crossing from Wynn to the mall, over the bodies of their own. A mixed bag of weapons greeted them. Half of them went down in two volleys from a .22 military rifle. Five fell to bursts from a pair of less powerful weapons: a 7.62X25 mm submachine gun, and a chattering weapon that fired the meek .22 rimfire round at a terrific rate. The rest were taken with single shots. The last got almost to the Cloud before going down to a decisive double tap from a distant .50 rifle.

"Why don't they blow the bridge?" Little Rock said to Columbus. "Or at least put people at the end?"

"If they destroyed the bridge, they would block the Boulevard," he answered. "And besides, would you want to fight with that over your head?"

Little Rock took a long look at the Cloud. Daylight shone through the crack in the middle, and pieces of landing gear and bracing dangled from the bottom. "I guess not."

As the truck parked, more shots rang out. Among the bodies, a wounded zombie stirred. It rose with a carcass of another zombie across its shoulders, shielding itself for the first few steps. Then it shed the corpse and ran. The automatic rifle opened up, too late. The zombie staggered but did not fall, disappearing into the murky gray under the cloud.

"It will probably die in 24 hours," said Detroit. "It would have been better if it had made it clean. Then it would have to compete for food with the other zombies. Instead, it will be more food for them."

As they walked past the Buccaneer Bay tent city, a fire truck rolled up to the bridge and extended a ladder, depositing a small crew who began heaving bodies over the edge. As they entered the casino, someone screamed.


	7. The Face

**I created the picture described here with Open Office draw, as an ebook "cover". Somewhat to my surprise, when I showed it to people they very consistently recognized it for what it is supposed to be.**

Tallahassee paused on the11th hole of the Wynn Country Club. "So, caddy," he said, "How should we play this one through?"

Nogales considered for only a moment. "How 'bout the tire iron?"

"You read my mind," Tal said, extending his hand to accept the proferred instrument.

A couple minutes later, Nogales blurted, "So, uh, Abbs- she's pretty awesome, huh?"

Tal looked over his shoulder. "Are you saying that's up for debate?" Nogales' face froze in mortification, bordering on terror. Tal laughed. "Hey, yankin' your chain! Of course, she's great, and I'm glad you think so too." He sprinted down to a green, and Nogales almost ran him down following behind. "My, aren't you a peppy li'l spitf-ire?"

He paused, peering over the next hill. In the midst of a milling pack was a jet engine and a hunk of wing. "Now's the time for a soft touch. Gimme the crossbow. Otherwise, this could be a real explosion shot." He took aim, and shot the nearest zombie in the throat before it could cry out.

After another hour, Tal smiled on the edge of a water hazard. "That leaves this course safe for duffers everywhere, he said, looking up at his "caddy" at the top of a low ridge. Now, time for a victory- ccigar." He rolled a joint, stuck it in his mouth and lifted a lighter. As it sparked, he noticed a swirling rainbow sheen on the surface of the water.

Nogales suddenly found himself knocked flat, just before the heat and flash.

"Well, that could have gone worse," Tal said as they walked back toward the Wynn, a looming building that didn't loom quite as high since the better part of its two upper floors had been sliced away like a piece of cheese. Suddenly, he stopped. "Well, I'll be-" Nogales gaped and fumbled for the binoculars.

"No, kid," Tal said as he gently took the binoculars away. "You may want to see it, but trust me, you don't want this to be the first time."

Through the binoculars, Tal watched a pallid, flitting figure- the zombie called "Floozie Q", clad only in a thong and a set of pasties. For all their iconic status, strippers and establishments that employed them were not a major part of the Strip; they were, in fact, concentrated on Industrial, a few blocks west. Tales had it that Floozie Q had been a college student who performed to pay for classes, that she had caught it from a fellow student, and then triggered the secondary outbreak on Industrial. "What do you say," he said with a grin, "we bag ourselves one of the most wanted?"

A humming sound approached the off-strip Best Western casino. One zombie shuffled out to investigate, only to be shot by the passenger of a passing golf cart. "There she is!" Tal shouted, pointing to a park area in front of a cluster of apartment buildings. He took aim, only to see her duck through the trees and then disappear between two buildings.

"There she is!" Tal said as they passed the building. "She's heading north on Cambridge, for the convention center. Just a little faster and-" Nogales braked abruptly,gaping at the back of a burned-out apartment building. Tal whirled around, sputtering in fury. Then he looked up, and fell silent.

The wall was charred black, and someone had turned it into a canvas. From stories above their head, two enormous blood-red eyes stared down. There was no outline of a head to hold them, but more shapes defined a ghoulish, grinning face that seemed to hang in the blackness. "It's Mothman!" Nogales babbled. "They say, he has no face, but only two big, glowing red eyes!"

Naw," Tal said, taking in steel gray triangles that strung together into a lopsided smile, the wide pink nose, the pale yellow crescents of its eyebrows, and especially two more triangles that could have been either ears or horns. "Have you ever read Alice in Wonderland? Or just seen one of the movies?" Nogales shook his head. "There's a character called the Cheshire cat, that always grins. It can disappear by magic, and when it does, the grin is last to go. Well, I'm pretty sure that's what that is."

"Do you really want to go on?" Nogales said. There was a moment of seething silence, then Tal began to shout. He cut himself short when he heard a sound: a distant, hysterical laugh.

Very soon after, the Treasure Island lookouts were treated to the rare sight of a golf cart popping a wheelie.


	8. Public Service 2

**A conclusion of a previous chapter... More working backwards.**

After another pause, Columbus added, "You shouldn't make any assumptions. You need to be observant and alert."

"Hey!" a deputy shouted, "the one in the drier is Little Anthony! Our girl just bagged herself one of the most wanted!" There was a smatter of cheers, and an exchange of high fives by Tal and Little Rock. Wichita excused herself, and her husband gazed after her. Tal and the girl whispered to each other.

"He really doesn't know?" Tal said, almost incredulously.

"She won't tell him because she thinks he already knows," Little Rock answered in amusement.

"Know what?" Columbus snapped over his shoulder. He stalked off, while Tal gaped and Little Rock smirked.

"Next question," read Columbus. "`How do I kill a zombie without attracting more zombies?'" He looked at Wichita confidently and expectantly.

She answered, noticeably flustered and starting to blush. "Well, if you can, kill it without using a gun. Studies show that they can detect even completely silenced weapons, just by smell. What draws them most is the smell of each other's blood, so the best ways are strangulation or blunt force trauma. If you have to use a fire arm, you can use a simple procedure..."

Detroit and Wichita retreated out of a hotel lobby, followed by two zombies. As the zombies reached the door, a third figure fell in with them. A zombie fell, quietly stunned with a rubber mallet. The other zombie turned with a hiss. Then Detroit leaned back in the door and pulled a plastic bag over its head. Wichita fired a single shot to the head with a silenced .32. The low-powered round did not exit, and what blood came from the single entry wound was mostly trapped by the bag. .Wichita lifted her eyes to meet her husband's stare. "What?"

"Nothing... just... you always look intense when you take a zombie out."

"Yeah, but don't get lovey-dovey on me, okay?"

"Last question," said Wichita. "Is it true there are ways to stop zombies from attacking?"

Columbus thought for some time before answering. "You should always avoid zombies if you can, and have a weapon you can defend yourself with," he said. "But, we are finding that zombies do have social structure and a kind of body language. There are ways to take advantage of this to deter or at least delay an attack...

Little Rock found the pack of four on the third floor of a damaged condominium, feeding on one of their own. These specimens were not quite starving, but lean and predictably more aggressive and sensitive. She did not flinch as a zombie turned its head and snarled, but grinned back, walking by faster without running. She could go back out, and let the deputies handle them. Then, involuntarily, she froze. The largest of the zombies was holding an infant that their latest meal had died delivering. The "alpha" zombie stood up, still holding its grisly meal, and lurched toward her, screeching and raising its arms menacingly. She gripped her little .32. She could kill the male, probably, but then the other three would come after her faster. She stifled a cry as it roared. But, she thought in an epiphany, it was not attacking.

She screamed back.

The alpha zombie snarled and turned back, casually dropping a chunk of meat behind it.

"So until next time," Columbus concluded, "be smart. Be safe."

"And work together," his wife said.


	9. Combined arms

Columbus and his companions received a hero's welcome, dining with the leaders of the community on the deck of a full-sized ship mockup in front of the casino, while the masses celebrated in the tent city below. Almost continuous gunfire was given no heed, though Little Rock quickly concluded that there was a grimness behind the festivities.

The chief of their hosts was addressed only as the Lieutenant. He said nothing of himself, and little was said of him. Columbus gathered that he had organized resistance by guests on the day of the outbreak, and been elevated by management to chief of security. "We appreciate all the help Circus Circus and Sahara have provided," he said. "We could never have held out as long as we have without it. I hope it is appreciated how important our position is."

Columbus nodded. "We know all too well. Frankly, there have been major problems with Circus Circus and Sahara's policies. With our new procedures, we have swept and secured more structures and area in the last month than in the last seven. Our new perimeter extends from Stardust to Sahara, and Paradise to Industrial..." He coughed.

"Yeah, lots of strip clubs," Little Rock said.

"So," he continued, "we're now in a position to join you in a combined operation. What we propose is for your forces to go first into the Venetian-Palazzo complex, then into the Wynn-Encore complex, where you will be supported by forces from Circus Circus and Sahara. Meanwhile, a force from Circus Circus will conduct a sweep of the Echelon construction site. Once these objectives are achieved, our combined forces will form a perimeter around the mall, and wipe out the infestation there."

The Lieutenant's eyes widened. "And what's the time frame?"

"Ten days, starting tomorrow."

The Lieutenant shook his head, looking sad but unyielding. "It can't be done. We only have 400 people who could handle this kind of operation, and half of them are tied up watching the mall."

"Then start by sending just the ones already guarding the Venetian," Columbus said patiently. "Or, just send us in. You can call it reconnaissance."

"I'll give you one squad," the Lieutenant said after a moment's thought. "And I want some help in return. The zombies in the mall don't just come over from the Wynn. They also come from the immediately surrounding buildings. The Trump Tower is the key. The infected don't seem to live in it, but they certainly move through it and around it. If we're going to clear the mall, we need the Tower first. Can you explore it for us?" Little Rock smiled.

Wichita eagerly picked up the phone, absolutely certain who it would be. "Hello, lover," she said.

On the other end of the line, Columbus coughed. "Hi... hon," he said. "Listen, I'm afraid I won't be back tonight. Maybe not tomorrow, either."

"Oh... I'm so sorry!"

"We'll be okay," her husband said. "So, uh... how as your afternoon?"

"Not as good as last night," she said, trying to be playful. "Oh... I hung out with Tal a little while... went to the casino..."

"That's good," Columbus said. "But listen, your sister wanted to talk to you..."

The sisters chatted about nothing at high speed for ten minutes. Columbus noticed the name of Nogales mentioned prominently. As the conversation wound down, Little Rock said, "Okay... I love you too... Here he is..."

Taking back the phone, Columbus heard his wife say, "Listen, since we can't be together, I want you to do something for me. Before you go to bed, picture us..." She went into a long and detailed description.

Columbus's brow furrowed. "But... We don't do that."

"...Good night," Wichita said wistfully. Ten minutes later, still sitting at the same spot, she began to cry. Twenty minutes after that, she managed to dial the phone.


	10. The canals of Venetian

"Oh... for... Pete's sake!"

Columbus stared across the bridge that ran from the Mirage to the Venetian. The Venetian had been built not so much next door to the Palazzo as directly abutting it. Their sprawling outliers of courtyards, recreation areas, shops and parking structures merged into a single pseudo- Mediterranean megaplex, and even the main towers had only 421 feet between them.

Now, the Palazzo tower was a half-imploded hulk, its three segments tilting in different directions, with the left wing crushing through the congress center like a glacier through a mountain. At the foot of the tower, much of the ground floor and rooftop courtyards had caved in, most likely courtesy of a collapse in the sub-basement parking garage. One wing of the Venetian's Y-shaped main tower was leaning enough to cover the short distance to the further wing of a second, U-shaped tower, the other wing of which was visibly sagging inward over an elevated, central courtyard.

"They think," Columbus said, sounding dazed, "that there are zombies alive in there?"

"They gotta be coming from somewhere," said the TI squad leader. He was a man in the well-preserved fifties, missing a hand. Scuttlebutt had it that he had been bitten by a zombie, but saved himself by cutting off his own hand.

Columbus started across the bridge. Beside him, Little Rock asked, "Hey. Why didn't you say the word?"

"What word?"

"You know."

"No."

"You do it with my sister..." Columbus hunched his shoulders and walked faster. Little Rock took a look at the TI leader, and particularly his jutting chin. "Say... I think maybe I've seen you somewhere before."

"I don't think so," he said gruffly.

"Were you ever in movies?"

"A few... maybe," he said, now in a clear tone of warning.

"You remind me... What was his name..."

"_My_ name," he said, "is _Bruce!_"

Columbus reached the end of the bridge, and turned back. "Okay, time to think smarter," he said. "Do those towers look even remotely habitable?"

Bruce shook his head. "No- but that doesn't mean zombies won't nest there."

"But what evidence do we have of that?" Columbus said. "Zombies do have survival instincts, and if there's anything they are going to avoid, it's a unstable building: Even if they aren't scared away, the noise, smells and dust will make them disoriented. So, we don't bother with the buildings, except maybe the edges. Now where else could zombies be?" Bruce looked to the left. Looming over the bridge was a partially constructed condo building.

"But they usually avoid construction sites!" he said.

"Yeah... Then there's that." Columbus pointed to a "clock tower" subcomplex, connected to the Venetian courtyard by a covered bridge. Bruce swore.

The "anchor" for the clock tower center was Madame Tussaud's wax museum. The air conditioning had been working only intermittently, keeping the sculptures intact, but allowing strange mutations. Little Rock paused before a Marilyn Monroe sculpture that had developed wrinkles, sagging cleavage and a bulging belly. "And people say you died too young," she mused.

Columbus beckoned her forward, waving for silence. She peered into the murk, and nodded. A male zombie was curled up in a fetal position behind Tiger Woods' golf bag. The zombie stirred at her approach. She slid a club out of the golf bag, and struck the zombie between the eyes with the handle. She stifled a gasp when it dropped dead, with blood trickling from its nose.

Both anxious, they proceeded more cautiously. Columbus still had no trouble surprising a zombie under Barack Obama's desk. They walked by Hugh Hefner's bed, then Little Rock took a second look at the women under either arm. Approaching from either side, the two of them each bagged one. As they completed a circle, Little Rock stopped and decapitated Simon Cowell. Columbus smiled, then walked solemnly toward a doorway marked: "Scream!" He drew a silenced .38 and unfolded an M6 Scout, a double-barreled survival weapon chambered for .22 rimfire and .410 shotgun rounds. Little Rock drew a PPK pistol. Together, they walked through the door.

Bruce and his men ran up at the sound of unsuppressed gunfire. He arrived to find the pair of faux zombies standing in front of the horror maze. "We got it all taken care of," the girl said casually. "It was a pack of nine, no big deal."

"Then why did one of you shoot without a silencer?"

"'Cause," said Little Rock scornfully, "somebody here used half the bullets in his silenced gun on a dummy!"

"Hey," Columbus said, "if I hear a noise, and then I see someone with a pale face and bloody teeth standing in a dark corner, what else am I supposed to do?"

"We've taken out fifty-one zombies today," Bruce said as 5:00 PM approached. "That doesn't explain the numbers we see in the Wynn and the mall."

"Then the zombies must have other ways to get there," Columbus said. He looked down from the marginally accessible roof parking area behind the Venetian's second tower. Across a driveway was a sprawling building called the Sands convention center. Across the street to the south were the Harrah's Casino and a connected parking garage. "Look there! There's a ped bridge from Harrah's to the garage, and the garage to the convention center. From there, they could circle Palazzo, keeping out of sight, and them pop in only as long as it takes to get to the footbridge. They could also climb and walk along those monorail tracks, as long as the power's out. But I'm guessing the main source of new arrivals is that parking garage across from the center. It has a ped bridge that goes straight to the Wynn."

Bruce nodded. "Oh- something else you should know: You got one of the most wanted. Big Bertha. She was one of the ones next to Hef in the wax museum. She wasn't half what she used to be, but I recognized her."

"There's confirmation, then," said Columbus, "that the zombies' food supply is running out."

"Then a lot of people will say, wait for them to starve," Bruce said.

"That's one way of looking at it," Columbus said. "But the other is that the only food left is us."


	11. Surprises

**This is meant to lead into an alternate draft of the Stratosphere/Jack Ketch chapters from "Fear and Loafing".**

That evening, there were open festivities in the Buccaneer Bay tent city. Columbus shyly accepted a seat with the Lieutenant, though he squirmed at speech after speech of praise. After about half an hour, he stiffened in surprise as his wife stepped onto the deck and took the microphone.

"I'd like to tell you a little about my husband," she said. Columbus hunched his shoulders. "When you meet him, the first thing you're likely to think is, `Get some sun!' The next thing you think is, `He has the guts of a guppy.' But if you get to know him, you realize something: Courage isn't about how often you're afraid. It's about how often you let your fears stop you from doing what you want to do and need to do. And once you think about it that way, you realize: `This is the bravest man I have ever met.' "

The deputies gave a modest cheer. She then leaned forward and spoke directly to her husband, who looked increasingly like an agoraphobic turtle: "Columbus, the minute I realized that was when I knew I love you. Every day I wake up beside you, my first thought is, I'm the luckiest woman alive to be with you." He raised his head and managed a smile. "And... I'm proud to say.. I'm having your baby."

There was a moment of silence, then a rising chorus of cheers, whistles, whoops and risquee jokes. Columbus looked to be still smiling, but on close examination his expression was more like a grimace of terror. He was almost catatonic in the face of well-wishers surrounding him, even (if not especially) when Tal pulled him to his feet, hugged him, pounded his back and kissed him on each cheek for good measure. "Yup, she killed him," Little Rock said to no one in particular.

"Where is he?" Bruce demanded.

"We're trying to find out, so hold your horses!" said Tal. "Besides, aren't you ahead of schedule?"

"I know where they are," Little Rock said.

Bruce insisted on going with them. His personal vehicle was guaranteed to surprise and alarm anyone who saw it in their rear view mirror: It was a late-model VW Bus, cheerfully pastel yellow, augmented with the upper half of a Beetle in place of a roof. The sight was vaguely ghoulish, as if the Beetle were a trophy being worn like a leopardskin cape.

They found Tremors parked outside the house where Columbus had almost caught Andy Capp. "Hello?" Tal said, pounding on the door.

"Hold on a minute," Little Rock said, "Wichita made me a key." She fished a key chain out of her pocket and opened the door. Then, stepping inside, she shrieked. Tal drew his 1911 gun and went in after her. He beheld Columbus, stretched out on a couch in briefs and an unbuttoned shirt, obviously drunk.

"Hey," he said.

Little Rock crossed her arms and asked accusingly, "Where's Krista?"

"We're-" Columbus belched. "-Separated." Tal and Little Rock gaped.

"Hi. Why the long faces?" Krista stood just outside a hallway, wearing only a bathrobe.

"We talk," said Little Rock. "NOW." Turning a disgusted eye to her brother-in-law, she added, "And for * sake, put some pants on!"

"I don't see what there is to make a big deal about," Wichita said. She was sitting up on the bed, clasping her belly, while her sister perched on the edge. "I mean, we aren't breaking up, or divorcing, or anything. It's just, we decided we got into this too fast, and we didn't work some things out when we should have. So now we're backing up and giving each other some space for a while."

"Are you staying out of bed?" Little Rock asked disdainfully. Krista only laughed. After an awkward silence, Little Rock looked to her sister and added: "Is he mad?"

After a moment's thought, Wichita said, "No. I don't think so. Well... Not at me. It's just... we weren't ready for this so soon."

Little Rock rolled her eyes. "What were you _expecting _to happen?"

The door opened abruptly. It was Columbus, fully clothed and in sunglasses. "Let's go. Everybody. There's a place I've been wanting to go."


	12. Fortress without a valet

**I suppose this doesn't fit well with the last chapter, but it's what I came up with as the next step. Incidentally, the italicized lyrics are from Sara Groves' "In the Girl There's a Room". I decided the present verse fit best with a rewrite that hasn't appeared here, but I didn't want to use any more without posting this somewhere.**

_in the girl there is faith  
and the faith there's a prayer  
in the prayer there's a promise_

_in the boy is a dream  
in the dream he is standing  
and he stands without falling  
and he won't back down_

The scale of Fashion Show mall was cause for many surprises. Perhaps the biggest was that the Neiman Marcus anchor store was, for all practical purposes, a free-standing structure. It was from Neiman Marcus that a bridge stretched to Treasure Island. In front, the store opened not onto the mall interior but the courtyard beneath the Cloud.

By necessity, Treasure Island had set up a colony in Neiman Marcus, of forty fighting men (and women) and a similar number of support staff, mainly their families. It was a harsh life, of daily bloodshed, rigid rules, constant vigilance and negligible privacy, but they were proud to be the colony's bulwark against the infected. Lately, they had extended themselves, posting another ten men in Macy's next door.

Tal, Columbus, Wichita, and Little Rock made a triumphal entry from the Wynn, driving a golf cart made up as a Hummer across the Wynn footbridge. Columbus rode shotgun, but reached back to hold his wife's hand. Tal had to brake and carefully maneuver for the final approach, which brought them to a stop in an upper dining/pedestrian area.

"So, why aren't we going straight to the tower?" Little Rock asked Columbus.

"The point is to plan an offensive on multiple fronts," Columbus answered. "To do that, we have to start with the area that's already secure."

Bruce came out to meet them. "Nice entrance," he said, in a tone that made it hard to tell whether (or how much) he was being sarcastic. "Now hurry up, it's almost time for the afternoon sweep." Wichita and Columbus managed to leave the car without letting go of each other, while Little Rock rolled her eyes.

Tal had to back the mini-Hummer down the stairs, while the others went inside. White sheets covered the windows, softening the sunlight. The lights of the store were off, except for a few select areas, including a cafe in the center. All conversation was muted, and many if not most were asleep. The resting guardians lay together in well-defined sections of the floor, as tight and neat as sardines in a can- and as chaste, apart from the steady traffic of pairs going to and from an adjacent set of changing rooms.

Bruce sat down at one of the cafe tables, and pointedly cleared his throat. "Here is the floor plan of the mall," he said, spreading out a map. "Now, this east wing used to be the whole mall. Then the west wing was built as an extension. When they expanded the mall, they left a big open space in the middle. We call it the 38, as in parallel... Well, we do now. It used to be the `Maginot line', but the Lieutenant didn't like it... So, anyway, this is our front line. Every day, we sweep our side, and take out the new arrivals before they can group together. Every night, we fight off packs that come from the other side. And the next day, we start all over again. We're looking for a way to break the cycle."

He began pointing to parts of the mall. "The other anchor stores on this side are Robinson's May and Forever 21, in zone D. We still don't have that under control. Section C, in the middle, they turn up, but we take care of them. In the west, it's Sach's an' Bloomingdale's on this side, Nordstrom's across the way, and Dillard's on the end. It's Nordstrom's that gives us the worst troubles. Somebody drove an SUV through the ground floor until he smashed through the crowd barricade. That leaves the whole west side wide open."

Columbus nodded. "...But if you take the tower, you can cover the outside entrance."

"I don't get it," Little Rock said. "Why not lock up all the stores you can, and wait for the zombies to starve or go away?" Bruce looked warily at her, and sidelong at her sister.

"C'mon, kid," he said with a sigh, "you're too old not to know the answer to that." She showed neither surprise nor satisfaction. Columbus looked again toward the tight sleeping groups. He had wondered why they were so vigilant in their own stronghold, and he was the one who had been naïve: They were not just soldiers, but keepers of a treasure trove, and their responsibilities included watching each other.

He stood up, still holding Wichita's hand. "I want to be on your defensive line tonight, and explore the mall in the morning. That will be all, for now."

The children's department was right nest to the cafe, and that was where the little colony's score of children played and slept. None of them were less than eight years old, and the store's expensive toys were obviously intended for younger children. Yet, they did play with them. He watched especially a girl and a boy taking turns diving onto a huge bear big enough to double as a beanbag chair. Intermittently, he squeezed his wife's hand.

The changing room was dark except for one light at the entrance. Even in the darkness, it was far from anyone's idea of privacy, but the blend of whispers and cries gave a kind of anonymity. Columbus set a light of his own on the shelf, then finally let go of Krista's hand so he could work on her blouse. When she was bare to the waist, he stepped back, and reached out. Tears welled in his eyes as he felt the still-slight bulge in her midriff.


	13. Battle of the Midway

One of the mall center's more prominent features was a balcony halfway up the second floor, linking upper levels of several of the larger non-anchor stores. The first of the Neiman Marcus group to their positions were a machine gun crew that hustled up the immobile escalators to the balcony. Through a pair of binoculars, Columbus watched them manhandle a Kalishnikov into position. Riflemen fanned out to either side. More shooters took positions on the edges of the walkways. On the second-floor walkway, a slender man with dark hair going to gray gave a nod and rode away on a scooter.

He sat back down in the shotgun seat of a strange little car called the Isetta. "You say they come every night. How many?"

"It depends," Bruce said. "A couple packs, at least. About once every two weeks, we get a swarm. We're overdue."

Columbus glanced down at a pit in the center- the underground parking access. "Do they ever come up from there?"

"Nah," said Bruce. "All the doors down there are locked, bolted and blocked. We check them every day. We find scratches where the zees nose around, but never so much as a barricade nudged off center. They don't get in that way." Columbus nodded, but continued to examine the pit.

Beside them, Tal pulled up. Little Rock was beside him, in zombie makeup, and in the back- "Krista. Please, go back," Columbus said.

"No," she replied. "Wherever you go, I'm going." From the far side of the balcony, a shot rang out.

For the first ninety minutes, there was nothing but occasional shots and reports, as sentries sighted and engaged individual zombies. They were permitted, at their discretion, to trail a zombie for thirty feet, but needed permission to go any further. One report described three zombies on the lower level of Section D. "I think one of 'em coulda been Andy Capp," the sentry concluded.

"Go back to your post," Bruce ordered. To Columbus, he said, "People say they saw Capp all the time. A lot of them can't even say if he had a hat on. You ask me, he wouldn't be seen so much if people didn't want to see him." On the balcony, shots rang out. Everyone straightened to attention. Bruce started the car.

Five zombies lay dead outside the Nordstrom's lower entrance. A sixth was cut down as it tried to take cover inside a store's entryway. Bruce drove along a walkway where the mall held actual fashion shows. He reached for a pump action shotgun, while steering with a metal ball with a hook and spike that covered his stump. "Take it," he said to Columbus. After a moment's hesitation, he did. Columbus spotted a flitting shape behind a waste basket, and fired instinctively. Bruce wheeled around in a tight turn. The wounded zombie was crawling away. He pumped slowly, and fired barely in time. "What was that, buck fever?" Bruce said.

"I'm not used to a pump gun," he said. Bruce only swore under his breath. Within the Nordstrom's store front, more zombies were skulking. Others banged against the Dillard's store front. Bruce raised his speed to 25 mph and peeled away down the walkway, leading three zombies after him.

A short volley from an M16 SAW cut down their pursuers. More zombies fell to fire from the sentries. A shouted warning and a burst of fully automatic fire announced zombies on the walkways. The foremost sentries retreated to the balcony. Meanwhile, on the lower level, a score and more of zombies poured out of Nordstrom's.

Bruce circled again. Columbus blasted a zombie, pumped the gun and pulled the trigger again. The gun clicked. He had pumped it a time and a half. He pulled the pump back the rest of the way to fire a wild parting shot as Bruce withdrew. More zombies were still coming.

As the zombies passed under the balcony, the Kalishnikov opened up. Its 7.62 ammunition was about as powerful as the .22 caliber rounds of the SAW and M16s, but had better stopping power. The decimated front ranks of the swarm faltered and fell. Then, shouts from the balcony: Zombies were coming out of a door on the far side. A rifleman fired three shots before being caught in a crush of bodies. The SAW was turned to fire point-blank, halting the newcomers. On the near side, a rifleman shot through another door before a zombie could open it. But the divided fire let the zombies on the escalators advance, while more and more got through below. When a dying zombie fell through the glass wall, the machine gunners laid down a last volley and retreated.

Tal stood beside the mini-Hummer, while Little Rock took the driver's seat. The first zombie to approach got two rounds in the chest and another in the head. He shot two more in the time it took the girl to start the cart. He leaped aboard, firing the rest of the clip over his shoulder. Then, while he was still leaning out, his shoulder struck a kiosk, and he fell.

Crossfire whizzed out of the Macy's entrance, thinning the ranks of the swarm. Somewhere in the mall, there was a boom of a huge weapon. In the midst of the zombies, the Isetta made another pass. Columbus fired two shots in succession, killing one zombie and winging another. Bruce made yet another turn, coming within less than a foot of a support column. An especially tall zombie suddenly lunged at them, leaning down to reach through the open sunroof of the tiny car. Bruce slashed the intruding hand with the hook on the bottom of his ball prosthesis, then swung upward to catch the zombie on the chin. "Tallahassee's down!" he shouted.

Tal hit the ground and tumbled. Lesioned hands were already reaching for him. He emptied a 1911 gun, firing virtually blind, then grabbed for the rifle. With his had still spinning, he fired a concussion grenade, which knocked him back to the floor. Lifting his head, he saw far fewer zombies around, but unfortunately five of them were reaching for him. Down the hall, he heard cries and a crash, and closer at hand the puttering of the Isetta. He nodded grimly, and reached for his derringer. Then, suddenly, there was a single, thunderous shot, and the zombies fell as if by magic.

The Isetta pulled up. "Climb onto the cargo rack in back!" Bruce shouted. Columbus stared pas his friend. There was the slender man on the scooter, nonchalantly shouldering the biggest gun he had ever seen that wasn't on wheels. Tal complied, and they drove for Macy's. Columbus stood up for a look around, and shrieked.

Toward the far end of the mall, the mini-Hummer was stopped against an escalator, halfway overturned. A pack of zombies was gathered around it.


	14. Rescue

Just inside the Macy's storefront, Tal pushed back Columbus, while two deputies held his arms. "You can't help them!" Tal said, with tears in his own eyes. "Look, I- I love them too. But we have to let go. It's what she would want!"

With a searing curse, Columbus pulled free of one of the deputies and clocked Tal. Then, shaking him self free of the last guard, he shouted, "She's my wife! I promised to be with her, as long as both of us are alive! And it's not just her. She... she has my baby inside her. If... if she isn't... gone... and we get to her in time... she could still carry it to term. It could be healthy... It _could_ happen, damn it! Women with AIDS have babies all the time!" He turned the key to the barricade. "I'm going out there. So are you going to shoot, or stand there, or act like you give a damn?"

"Wait!" someone shouted. From a knot of ashen-faced fighters standing subtly apart from their comrades, one stepped forward, raising his bandaged arm. "I'll go."

"Count me in," said the slender man with the huge gun.

Tal sat up. "Okay... Let's think this through... how fast can you get your makeup on?"

"Fifteen, twenty minutes," Columbus said, "if I just do the basics."

It was done in ten.

Little Rock knew it had been her fault. She had looked back when Tal fell off, and when she looked forward they were a split second away from hitting the escalator. As the zombies had moved in, she had done the only thing she could: scream.

"How many are there?" Wichita said.

"Too many," Little Rock answered. She drew back from the corner of the second-floor walkway, and they jogged the other way. They could see the Neiman Marcus entrance beckoning from across the mall, but a swarm of zombies stood in the way. Behind them, a curving passage led to the Cloud courtyard, but it led through a restaurant first.

"They're following us," Wichita warned.

"I know," her sister answered. Ahead of them, a walkway offered a clear path, except for one zombie in the middle. A snap double tap sent it tumbling over the edge without a cry, but with a spray of blood even before it hit the bottom. As they ran across, Wichita's boot skidded in a pool of blood.

On the deck outside Neiman Marcus, glass vibrated with the blast of the slender man's shotgun. Columbus and the party of the wounded sallied forth over the bodies of a pack zombies. "Now that," Tal said to Bruce, "is what I call a boom stick!" Bruce only scowled. Turning to the thin man, who had introduced himself as "Q", he asked, "What is that gun, anyway?"

"It's a working replica of a late 1800s 4-gauge shotgun," he said. "Technically, more like 6 gauge."

"What did they use it for?"

"Shooting birds... many birds at a time."

Dozens more zombies milled about in the court, and they immediately began orienting toward Columbus and his wounded companion. A pack on the balcony moved to intercept them. . "If she has a boy," the other man said to Columbus, "name him Sam." At that, he tore off his bandage and rushed at the pack, shouting, firing randomly and shaking his rancid wound at the zombies below. The rest of the group ran for the entrance. Behind them, the shots ended in a shout, a chorus of snarls and a crash of broken glass.

Little Rock froze in her tracks at a snarl. Directly in front of her, a tremendously fat zombie clad only in a pair of gym shorts lifted its head from feeding on a slain zombie. After a moment's hesitation, she responded by baring her teeth and hissing. The zombie roared back, and then withdrew into a store front, dragging its meal behind it. She peered inside, and when she saw the zombie known as the White Whale crouching with its back turned, she waved for her sister to follow, quickly.

They had come within sight of the mall center. The midway was on the other side of a smaller, circular open space, and on the other side of it was the carnage of the balcony. A bridge crossed the nearest pit, but it was blocked by scavenging zombies. She shook her head in hopelessness. She started and almost screamed when Little Rock touched her shoulder. Mutely, her sister pointed down the escalator. They could go down, cross the midway and go back up- if the zombies on the floor didn't kill them first.

Columbus jostled his way through a pack on the walkway to Neiman Marcus. Not for the first time, he had the feeling that the zombies were not truly deceived into accepting him as their own, but only confused enough to tolerate him. As they pressed toward the crowd barricade, they threatened to drag him along like driftwood with the tide. With one last shove, he broke free of the crowd. Then, behind him, he heard a hiss. He looked over his shoulder, straight into the shadowed face of Andy Cap.

Krista had reached the base of the second escalator when she heard an especially loud zombie scream on the upper floor, then the sounds of the chase. She almost fired her weapon at the figure that appeared at the top of the stairway. Then her sister shouted, "Austin!" The pair met in an embrace at the bottom, in a moment of euphoria before ice cold terror returned.

It was from Macy's lower level storefront that the nearest zombies came, and then- deliverance. A huge gun thundered from both barrels, and a score of zombies fell. Then from under a barricade scarcely raised to waist height, the Isetta raced out. Columbus heaved up his bride and deposited her through the open roof. Then he and his young sister-in-law leaped onto the back. He ducked his head just in time as they drove back in; behind them, a pack's worth of zombies knocked themselves senseless on the crowd barricade.

The garrison swept forward in jubilation. Whether by accident or design, Columbus dropped off the car first, to take the brunt of their adoration. She started to stand up, when a hand gripped her wrist. "Tell them I was driving," Bruce said, shaking his spike, "and I'll shove this up your nose."


	15. Bitter victory

_So tell me what you know  
about god and the worth of the human soul  
how so much can go wrong  
and still there are songs_

_in our hearts and souls_

_hope stands in defiance  
an unstoppable refrain  
_

Columbus sat next to his wife, leaning against her without seeming wholly aware of her, rocking mechanically. He did not react when Bruce walked up, or when he bent down to speak: "We have the situation under control," he said. "More than a hundred zombies are down. The rest are in retreat. I guess there's losses even they can't take..."

"No," Columbus said, without looking up. "It's not about how many we kill... It's the smell... blood, and gun powder, and- stuff... At first it attracts them... But too much of it, in a space like this, just disorients them."

"Uh... okay... Well. We want you to take a look around the mall after sunrise. There's parts we can get to now that no one's set eyes on in months. Then we want you to check out the tower..."

"No," he said, finally lifting his head. "We don't need the tower. We don't even need to explore the mall. I can tell you where they are now."

"I told you," Bruce said, "they don't come in from here."

From the cab of the Isetta, they looked down the wreckage-strewn ramp to the underground parking garage. "They don't have to," Columbus said. "All they need is a place to hide while you're looking for them. Then they can get in the mall in any number of places."

"I don't think so," Bruce said. "But, okay, we'll check it out. We can't do it just on foot, though. We'll have to clear a path..."

"We can get through now if we're careful," Columbus said. "This car, and the mini-Hummer... Do you have anything smaller?"

They called it the Blue Bullet. It had begun life as an innocent, unsuspecting Citroen 2CV, France's underpowered and oversuspensioned counterpart to the Beetle it vaguely resembled, culled from the teeming hordes of Europe to exile on the far side of the Atlantic. Then someone had cut it to less than half its size... mostly the long way.

The end product looked like a cross between a kamikaze plane and a soapbox racer, painted an incongruous baby blue. It had 2 seats, one behind the other, and three tall, thin wheels, two in front and one in back. Its engine, while still relatively modest, was substantially more powerful than that of the original, much larger car, and big enough that bits of it stuck out of the sides of the narrowed engine compartment. It was a contraption even the likes of Q (who had fitted it with a pintel-mounted .22 rimfire machine gun) looked askance at, but one person claimed to have the skills, courage and modest stature to drive it. "_Vaya con dios_," Wichita said to Nogales. Looking to the passenger, she said, "Try to bring him back in one piece."

"Yeah, I think I can manage," Little Rock answered.

With a nasal bray, the car started, and it raced for the center of the mall. "Yeeeeehaaaa!" Little Rock shouted, raising her head above the open roof. With an impossibly tight turn, the Bullet turned down the escalators to the parking garage. "Yee-ee-ee-ee-ha-ha-aa-ah!"

The gunfire was as unrelenting as rain on a tin roof, drowning out the roar of engines and screams of the dying. Little Rock fired the Bullet's little machine gun at a pack of zombies that managed to get in their way. A zombie's head exploded under the gun's terrifically rapid fire. More keeled over. She got a painful jolt as the little vehicle ran over the dead and dying. One of the few zombies still standing roared as the car ran over its foot. Behind them, a swarm of zombies followed. Nogales did a hairpin turn, just as the Caddy's lights glared in the zombies' faces, followed in a split second by a hail of gunfire. "We're out!" she shouted to Nogales. He veered between clumsily parked cars, avoiding another pack, and then steered for an exit.

The line of sharpshooters at the mouth of the entrance ramp cheered as the Bullet emerged. Little Rock stood up and waved, and as the car coasted to a halt, Nogales followed suit, raising his hands in a "`V' for victory" sign and giving a silly grin. Cheers turned to laughter and whoops when Little Rock grabbed him, turned him around an gave him a quick but forceful kiss on the lips.

On the upper level of the garage, the mini-Hummer pulled a trailer from a "kiddie train", lined with chicken wire and bristling with rifles. The Isetta ran interference, and Q forged ahead on his scooter. The 4-gauge roared again, momentarily drowning out the chatter of rifles. The mini-Hummer pulled to a halt, just long enough to deposit a small crew at the entrance to a maintenance stairway. As it restarted, a shower of hurled objects pelted the cart. A wrench broke right through the chicken wire to clock a rifleman.

The Isetta turned, skirting another volley of debris. A modest pack flitted among the parked cars. Columbus stood up and fired, ducked and fired again. A zombie went down in a crash of shattering glass. He dodged an especially well-thrown rock, not quite successfully, as the missile glanced painfully off his shoulder. He fired two blasts in return, and saw a shape go down. He motioned for a halt, then vaulted out of the car.

Columbus blasted another zombie that lunged for him, and walked cautiously toward the fallen figure. "You aren't like the others," he said. "I could tell from just a glimpse. You're smarter. And you care. I think- maybe- you can understand me." He peered around the last car, looking down at the zombie known as Mr. Magoo. The zombie stared up. Columbus knew better than to take its gaze for eye contact. The glare of the fluorescent light directly behind him would have it nearly blind. Yet, there was something more than animal rage and terror in its face.

Then an especially long and loud volley of shots rang out. Magoo shrieked, and then lunged. A swinging tire iron struck Columbus's shotgun, deflecting the last of his shells. He pulled himself onto a car hood, narrowly avoiding a blow to the calf. Magoo gripped car doors on either side and pulled himself to his feet. Columbus fumbled for his backup revolver. Bruce fired first. "What the * was that about?" he said.

"This one _was_ different," Columbus said. "He threw that rock when I was aiming for a different zombie, like he was trying to draw my fire. Before that, he could have tried to escape, but instead he stayed with the others, helped them fight. If there were enough human left, then maybe... Well, I had to be sure." Bruce patted him on the shoulder.

Within an hour, it was winding down. The zombies that remained had retreated into recesses that required men on foot. The Isetta, the Bullet and the Caddy retired to the courtyard. Wichita and Columbus leaned against the Caddy, his arm around her waist. Beside them, Little Rock tolerated Nogales' flustered jabbering. On the driver's side, Tallahassee leaned out the window to discuss guns with Q. Bruce "All this time," Bruce said. "All the men... And all we had to do was check the basement. Gah!" He abruptly put his ball prosthesis through the window of an abandoned car.

"No," Columbus said, not unkindly. "The problem wasn't that you were looking in the wrong places. The problem was that you weren't thinking about it the right way. You looked for ways to keep them out, not ways to hunt them down. You looked for their nests further away, not closer to home. You did that because you were too afraid and confused to really think about it clearly. And that wasn't something you could change with a choice. You just needed the right time, and the right people. That's how it was at the Circus, and how it was for me." He looked at Wichita, sitting shotgun in the Caddy. She smiled back at him. He leaned back and sighed.

It seemed only moments later that shots and shouts sounded from Magionni's restaurant, on the end of the courtyard. The cry went up: "The White Whale! The White Whale!" In the time it took to turn their heads, the creature himself burst from the restaurant. The Whale ran in an unpredictable, lurching jog. Head shots missed, and volleys aimed at his center of mass seemed only to ripple his enormous belly. The gunfire abruptly petered off as he turned for the Caddy.

Columbus threw himself in front of Wichita, valiantly trying to pump his shotgun. Q raced to reload his shotgun. Bruce had time to get off a shot, a .454 magnum slug that sent ripples from one side of his belly to the other. But then there was a dull "chunk", and the White Whale spun and went sprawling.

The Whale squirmed and started to rise, but all eyes were on the smoking muzzle of Tal's grenade launcher. "Oh, holy *," Q said, "this is gonna be mess-!"


	16. Mystery

_in the man there's a plan  
in the plan is his future  
and the future's for his child and he won't slow down_

As dusk fell, festivities were again heard in the Buccaneer Bay tent city, and this time, hardly any gunfire was to be heard. Columbus was reclining with his wife in the bed of the Tremors truck, when Bruce, Little Rock and Melissa Strangelove walked up. "What is it?" he said, sitting up a little straighter.

"There's something left for you to do," Bruce said. He pointed to the Tower.

"Why are we doing this at night?" Nogales griped to Strangelove's camera.

"Hush!" said Little Rock.

They were twelve floors up Trump tower, checking each door for signs of activity. Columbus waved for the others to halt. The landing was streaked with blood, and the door was unlocked. More blood led to a door.

The door was locked.

Columbus tried to ram the door open. While he was reeling back with a possible shoulder injury, Little Rock shot the lock out with a 20 gauge. "Wait!" Columbus said. She drew back a step, looking at him questioningly. Strangelove brought her camera to bear. Within the room, something lumbered for the door. Nogales fired. Little Rock started to protest, but Columbus waved for silence. "It's a Type 3," he said. "No more or less. It was smart enough to stay alive after the others starved or went somewhere else. Even so, it's malnourished. I expect it's the last we'll see up and moving. Now we take the elevator."

They stopped at floor fifteen, then twenty, then thirty. On twenty, they found a partially consumed carcass, and a trail that led to a Type 2 too starved to move. On thirty, the only sign of life was a colony of unwholesomely well-fed crows. On forty-five, they found three zombies killed by gunfire, weeks if not months earlier, and not consumed. They found the presumed shooter on forty-seven, with a bullet in his own head.

At last, they came to floor 54. Dust was thick; months must have passed since any living thing had walked the corridor. Columbus's shoulders sagged, either in disappointment, relief or a little of both, but Nogales stalked forward in determination. He led the others straight to the right suite, and when Columbus battered the door open, he went straight for a room where a light shone under the door. Strangelove hurried up behind him. Nogales took one look, and turned back. "Hijo de-!"


	17. Observers, observed

**Here's the conclusion, which is pretty much something I was looking for a place to fit. It could also help flesh out my Saga's story arc a little more. Of course, the approaching holiday has also been a consideration.**

_in the woman is a picture  
in the picture is a girl  
in the girl there's a room..._

"...Let me get this straight," Wichita said to Tallahassee. "You showed my little sister _Evil Dead_?"

"_Evil Dead 2_," Tal said.

"Oh. Okay, that's all right." Wichita leaned back against the rear of the cab, and after a moment of silence said to Bruce, "So... how do you manage being a legend?"

"Well, I think it helps that the first movie was an `indie' project," Bruce said. "We knew we would be lucky if the movie got seen, let alone made money, an' never mind getting remembered. We were all in it for love and fun, and if the guy on the screen hadn't been anything like me, I wouldn't have played 'im... or anyway, if I had, I wouldn't have done it well enough for anybody to remember. But he's not all that I am, and I'm not everything he is. And I think the people who really love the movies are the ones who understand that. So, they can have him, and I can be me, and they can decide themselves which they like best."

Wichita leaned back, nodding, but then raised her head again. "But- what if the legend isn't just who you played, but who people think you are? And what if one of them's the person you s- live with?"

Bruce gave her an odd look, and smiled. "Then look in the mirror sometime, together, and see if you can see what he does."

Columbus looked interested, but not surprised. Nogales looked furious. "All those nights, looking up at this window, wondering who was up here... and the whole time, this was pointing down at us!"

Strangelove was well aware of the irony as she photographed the equipment. "This is military, no question," she said. "I had a friend who did defense work. He showed me a few pictures of something like this. This isn't just remote control cameras. It's a robotic intelligence asset, with a whole suite of sensors. And the lights... It's on an automated timer, just like you said." She carefully reached out and adjusted a view finder screen, then took a surprised step back when picture and sound came on.

"You know me. I'm Ahnold," said the voice from the machine, "da acting president of da United States. Dis is a recorded message from a classified location, going out to da citizens of Las Vegas. We have been watching you wid special interest, and we set up dis automated outpost to continue observation. I hope you don't feel we've been underhanded. As I said before, da US military has been ordered to widdraw from direct contact wid surviving civilians. We trusted you to take care of yourselves, while we preserved enough food, water and power to give you a fighting chance. We also made sure to leave you some goals to aim for, tests dat would measure your progress and maybe get you moving faster. And if you have come far enough to see dis, you've done your country proud.

"By the time you find this, we expect that the casinos where civilians are taking refuge will have become functional communities able to work togedder, and already reclaimed a substantial area of the city. We also expect dat da first thing you will want to do is trace da signal from dis outpost to a receiving installation. We'll try and save you the trouble: It doesn't work dat way. Dis outpost's communications gear is designed for non-directional transmissions only. You are not going to be able to use it to locate functioning military facilities, and even if you could, da people dere would not be able to help you. Not yet.

"Be advised, dat dere are some very dangerous people near you. Some may already be in your city. Be careful, especially when sending transmissions or actual expeditions beyond da upper Vegas Strip, if you send dem at all. If da wrong people get da right information, you could all be in far more danger. Odderwise, keep doing what you have been doing. We're all betting on you." The Governator gave a thumbs up, and the screen went blue.

Nogales scowled. "Is there a chance any of that was true?"

"Hey! Arnold's a good guy!" Little Rock protested. "He wouldn't lie to people."

"How do you know?" Nogales countered. "Because he plays good guys in the movies?"

Columbus cut in, calmly but firmly: "He's telling the truth." Looking outward and down at the Circus, he continued, "Everything he said makes sense. Especially about them wanting the outpost to be found, and not wanting their signals traced. If they wanted it to stay secret, they wouldn't have rigged the automatic light, and if they didn't want us to follow a trail to a base, they would have taken precautions. The question is, did he tell the whole truth?"

Strangelove's eyes widened, and she said, "Luxor!" For a moment, Columbus looked confused, then he nodded. Strangelove explained, "Every night, we see the column of light from Luxor, just like always. But why would Luxor be working? That whole area was trashed by fires and crashes from the airport."  
"It's worse than that," Columbus said. "I read once they have trouble with bugs: They fly into it till it looks like snow, and if they aren't cleared away, they can blot out the lamp. There's no way it could have worked this long without someone maintaining it."

"But why?" Little Rock asked.

"Navigation, probably. Aircraft could use it as a landmark… maybe even land by it. The airport is right across the boulevard. There might be enough of it left to service a few planes." Austin frowned. "But no one's been watching, because we had this mystery on our doorstep."

Nogales swore. Little Rock only asked, "Then what do we do?"

"It's too far south, through too many zombies," he said. "There's nothing we can do... not yet."

As Bruce wandered through the festive throng, he jostled against a surprisingly subdued man, who only mumbled an apology before heading in a different direction. He turned almost fearfully when the hook tapped his shoulder. "Hey... Do I know you somewhere?" said Bruce, eying the features behind a long, scraggly beard.

"I'll tell you what," said the other man. "If you are just Bruce, I will be just Donald."

As dusk gave way to night, Columbus stood on the very top of the Trump Tower. The roof had not gone wholly unscathed: Chunks of airplane debris were spread thinly about, and the protruding antennae and beacons had been ravaged. He was seated at the base of a crumbled latticework of an aviation beacon, its red lamps still glittering dimly from the lights of the surrounding city. "Columbus?" came the voice of Little Rock. Stepping up beside him, an orange-tinted flashlight in hand, she looked out, then looked back at him. "I thought you were afraid of heights."

"It's not so bad at night," he said, "and as long as I'm back from the edge."

A wind rose, whipping hair and clothes, but Columbus stood serene. "Are you mad at Krista?" Little Rock asked.

"No," he said, then hesitated under her gaze. "Okay, maybe I'm mad... but I don't _blame_ her. She is who she is, and I shouldn't have expected her to change overnight... I know this wouldn't have happened without both of us."

"Uh, yeah, I _thought _you took biology."

"It's what happened in the mall that bothers me most," he said. "First she tells me she's- expecting... Then she puts herself in harm's way... Then I get left thinking..." Tears streamed from his eyes. "I just wish I could understand why. She risked both our futures, and whatever we made together, and you, too... And for what? I want to understand that- OW!"

He tried to dodge more kicks at his shins. "Do you still not get it? She's in love with you! I don't just mean Bambi `twitterpated' love, or even `Romeo an' Juliet' love, I mean creepy stalker love! She falls apart without you!"

"No," he said, stooping, then raised a hand. "No... no more." He stared at her. "Why? Somebody like her... falling like that... for _me_? Aah!" He retreated from more furious kicking.

"Because, you stupid... inconsiderate... spaced-out... dork," she fumed, "you're- actually- a cute- sweet- guy!" She charged him, then he sidestepped and threw an arm around her waist. She shrieked, dropping her flashlight to pound on his shoulder. "Put me down!" He obliged by setting her on a ledge almost five feet above the rest of the roof. As he turned in smug triumph, she leaped onto his back, and they both went down laughing.

"We should go back," Columbus said as he got up.

"Yes, let's," Little Rock said, bending to pick up her flashlight. As the beam lifted, two red discs in the beacon tower flared so bright they seemed lit from within- and then they moved. Little Rock screamed, less in fear than in surprise and disgust, as an eight-foot hunchback seemed to unfold from within the twisted metal, covered in an unwholesome pelt that gave the impression of insectoid cilia. Then the great wings spread, and a great gust stung at their eyes as Mystery rocketed straight upward into the night.


End file.
